FSA gives complaints extension to PPI mis-selling victims

Many victims of debt insurance mis-selling will get a temporary extension to the time they have to complain to the Financial Ombudsman Service, if rejected by their lender.

You usually have to make a complaint to the independent arbitrator within six months of a final rejection or final response from your financial provider (see the PPI Reclaiming guide).

The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has today said those who have made a recent complaint about debt insurance mis-selling – often called payment protection insurance (PPI) to cover loan and credit card payments if you cannot work – have got five months longer than usual to do it.

You're eligible if you got a final response between 28 November and 28 April.

Five-month extension

While technically the six months limit still stands, the FSA is effectively freezing time for the next five months, until 27 October. At that point, time restarts from the point you're at today.

So, say you got a final response two months ago, you'd have another nine months to use the Ombudsman.

The FSA says the action has been taken to ensure recent complainants are not disadvantaged by running out of time to refer their complaint to the Ombudsman while the FSA tries to create a "long term solution to ensure customers are treated consistently and fairly when complaining about the sale of a PPI policy".

Many firms automatically reject PPI claims, yet the Ombudsman then upholds, on average, 90% of consumer protests it handles.

You can only usually start the complaint via the Ombudsman once you get the final response or you have not had a satisfactory answer from your lender or insurer within eight weeks.

Martin Lewis, creator of MoneySavingExpert.com, says: "PPI misselling has been a massive scam on so many levels, we continually get people reporting payouts of £5,000 plus and now well in excess of half a million template lettters have been downloaded from this site.

"This extension by the FSA is really good news, as well as the actual misselling itself, the secondary issue here is how providers deal with complaints. Often, they try to push people away, telling them they've no chance, even though if they then complain to the free Ombudsman service they'll often win. The extra time will be helpful to get the 'don't give up' message out there."

Have your say

This is an open discussion; anyone can post. Comments may be edited, and are only published during the working day. Please report any spam, illegal, offensive, racist, libellous posts (inc username) to fbteam@moneysavingexpert.com.

First it used Arnold Schwarzenegger's animatronic head to urge consumers to reclaim PPI - now the Financial Conduct Authority has enlisted two more celebrities in its campaign as next year's deadline approaches

Ten online retailers including household names such as Accessorize and Oasis have been giving shoppers the wrong info about their return rights for sale items, a MoneySavingExpert.com investigation reveals - and five more including M&S and New Look have given info we believe is misleading.

Should loyal customers be charged more than new ones? On the surface the answer is a simple no – but nothing is that simple. Many consumer marketplaces function because only some people embrace competition, and we need to work out what happens if we change that

If you’re shopping online for gifts, the deadline for ordering to get ’em in time for Christmas may be sooner than you think. Get it wrong and instead of presents under the tree, they could be held hostage at a courier firm’s out-of-town depot… To help avoid this, retailers now give their own final cut-off dates for orders you want...

How this site works

We think it's important you understand the strengths and limitations of the site. We're a journalistic website and aim to provide the best MoneySaving guides, tips, tools and techniques, but can't guarantee to be perfect, so do note you use the information at your own risk and we can't accept liability if things go wrong.

This info does not constitute financial advice, always do your own research on top to ensure it's right for your specific circumstances and remember we focus on rates not service.

We don't as a general policy investigate the solvency of companies mentioned (how likely they are to go bust), but there is a risk any company can struggle and it's rarely made public until it's too late (see the Section 75 guide for protection tips).

Do note, while we always aim to give you accurate product info at the point of publication, unfortunately price and terms of products and deals can always be changed by the provider afterwards, so double check first.

We often link to other websites, but we can't be responsible for their content.

Always remember anyone can post on the MSE forums, so it can be very different from our opinion.

MoneySavingExpert.com is part of the MoneySupermarket Group, but is entirely editorially independent. Its stance of putting consumers first is protected and enshrined in the legally-binding MSE Editorial Code.